Bioreduction of selenium
- Bureau of Mines, Salt Lake City, UT (United States)
The US Bureau of Mines, Salt Lake City Research Center (SLRC), is investigating the biological reduction of selenate and selenite to develop a bioreactor for selenium removal from various processes and wastewaters. Indigenous selenium-reducing microorganisms vary somewhat from site to site and overgrowth of an established indigenous selenium-reducing microbial population by other indigenous nonselenium-reducing bacteria can pose a major bioreactor problem. In attempts to overcome this problem, the SLRC has used a consortium of selenium-reducing bacterial isolates as biofilms and immobilized in alginate beads to treat wastewaters containing 0.6 to 30.0 mg/L selenium. Reduction of both selenate and selenite to elemental selenium was obtained. Selenium reduction has been observed in a variety of bacteria under both aerobic and microaerophilic conditions. The SLRC has also used immobilized crude enzyme preparations to remove selenium from mining process solutions. The enzyme preparations reduced selenium in process solutions containing 100 mg/L cyanide; selenium-reducing bacteria are not cyanide tolerant. In laboratory tests, over 98% selenium removal has been attained using mining wastewaters.
- OSTI ID:
- 491056
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9406250--
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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